Setting up chat routing

Note: Chat routing is available for Professional and Enterprise customers.

Customers on the Team plan can enable Chat routing, but cannot configure it further.

Specify how incoming chat requests are sent to agents with Chat Routing settings. There are two options for how incoming chats are sent to your agents:

Broadcast: All agents get notified of all relevant chats, and the agent has to click on Serve Request to start serving the chat. This is the default setting.

Assigned: Chats are evenly assigned amongst online agents, such that only one agent is notified of each incoming chat at any time.

Incoming chats are assigned to the online agent currently who's been available (i.e. not serving a chat) for the longest time. If all agents are actively serving chats, the chat is assigned to the agent currently serving the fewest chats. If multiple agents are tied for the fewest chats, the chat is assigned to one of those agents in a round robin fashion.

Assigned chats appear in animated tabs at the bottom of the dashboard.

To change the chat routing method for your account

From the dashboard, select Settings > Routing > Settings tab.

In the Chat Routing section, select a routing method.

For Enterprise plan customers, if you select Assigned chat routing, you can also enable skills routing here (see Routing chats based on agent skills). (see Routing chats based on agent skills).

Click Save Changes.

Configuring chat limits

Limit the number of concurrent chats each agent in your account can take at once. The way the limit works depends on your routing method:

Broadcast: When agents are at the specified chat limit, they will no longer be notified of incoming chat requests, and they will not be able to serve chats through the Serve Request button.

Agent: Chat limits are configured in each agent's profile. You can specify whether only admins can edit agents' chat limits or agents set their own limits.

Note: Chat limit settings have no effect on your widget or its online status. Even if all agents are at their limits, visitors can still initiate chats, which are then queued until an agent becomes available.

To enable chat limits

Go to Settings > Routing > Settings tab.

Next to Chat Limit, select On.

Next to Limit Type, select Account or Agent.

If you selected Account, enter a value in the Maximum Chats field.

If you selected Agent, chat limits are configured in each agent's profile:

With the Assigned routing method, select the Personal Limits check box that appears for agents to set their own chat limits in their profiles.

If you're using the Broadcast routing method or using Assigned but don't select the Personal Limits check box, set a chat limit for each agent's profile. Select an agent to edit under Manage > Agents and enter a value in the Chat Limit field.

Click Save Changes.

Configuring additional settings for Assigned routing

If you selected Assigned routing method, there are additional settings you can configure.

Configuring skills routing (Enterprise)

Configuring Hybrid Assignment Mode

This setting applies only if chats are Assigned and chat limits are enabled.

Hybrid Assignment Mode gives agents the option of serving additional chats once they've reached their chat limits. Agents will have the option of clicking the Serve Request button to pick up additional chats. If this option isn't enabled, agents can see incoming requests but aren't able to click on the button.

On the Professional and Enterprise plans, you can analyze chat routing data in Analytics with two statistics:

Acceptance: the percentage of assigned chats that were served by agents out of all the chats routed to the agent

Capacity (beta): The estimated amount of chats that can be served by the account in a given period of time. The capacity is a function of 1) the number of agents logged in, 2) the average chat duration of an account and 3) the chat limit set by the agent.

Hello, I'm not able to resend a french (for example) chat to French agent. Can be done this automatically? I mean, if for example a French person write "Bonjour", is it possible this chat be opened or resend automatically to French Agent?

Thanks for sharing your request. Currently, routing settings are tied to the account and not the department. We have no plans in the next 6 months to change this behaviour but do understand the need to have department level routing settings and your feedback have been shared with the relevant teams.

Regarding "Note: Chat limit settings have no effect on your widget or its online status. Even if all agents are at their limits, visitors can still initiate chats, which are then queued until an agent becomes available.", is there a way to stop customers from being able to join the queue? If I'm the only person on chat and am at my chat limit, I don't want customers to be still seeing the option to chat with us.

As a workaround, what would be best practice - do you or anyone else have any advice?

I will be the only agent to start with and I don't want to be overwhelmed. Should I put myself as 'invisible' as soon as I have as many chats as I can handle? I don't plan on adding a schedule to our chat for now, since I won't be able to be on it all the time during my work day.

Yes, the best mechanism is to change your status to invisible when you do not want more chats being assigned to you.

If all agents are offline/invisible, it will change the widget status to offline and depending on your account settings it will show the offline form/contact form or not show for new visitors on your website.

What is considered "serving a chat"? If the agent has been chatting and the customer hasn't replied in a while, and the agent hasn't posted in a while yet both parties still have the chat window open, does that count as an "active chat"? In other words, if I have one agent who is really aggressive with closing chat windows and others who leave them open, will the first agent get more chats assigned?

Serving a chat is once they accept and start chatting. If the customer hasn't replied in a while, it is still considered an active chat until the customer is idle for 20 minutes (I wish there was a way for an Agent to "end the chat" but there isn't.). If this customer replies after the agent closes the chat window, the chat will be reassigned to the next available agent.

If one agent is aggressive with closing chat windows and others leave them open, it will depend if the end users reply back or not after a given chat window is closed as to who will get more chats assigned....

I don't recall if I've seen it in documentation. I just happen to know from ferreting out stats and trying to make sense of them. I like to keep my Chat window up on the home page so I can see visitors and who they were assigned to. I can see if one person didn't serve the chat and it got rerouted (30 seconds). You can't get that info afterwards in a play by play the way it is visually there. I digress.
The thing is, Chat should technically assign to the next available agent who is idle longest, so hopefully it evens out when an agent doesn't take the action you'd expect.